I take a deep breath. “Oh, and my back hurts. I’ve been standing all day.”

Nick walks toward me, closing the gap between us in a couple of long-legged steps. I stop breathing when he’s in front of me, the way you do when you step outside into freezing weather; his nearness is a shock to my system.

He puts a hand on my arm; that’s all it is. A hand on an arm, but it feels like more than that. “That sucks, Chloe,” he says.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask, desperately trying to avoid the small fire burning under his hand. “Shouldn’t you be making fun of me or something? Or complaining about how I’m not working hard enough?”

Nick gives me a half smile, one eyebrow raised. “I think we both know how hard you work.”

I swallow hard as “Steal Away” ends. And then, as we stand there staring at each other in the empty coffee shop, broom forgotten, the opening notes of “Steal Away” start to play. Again.

“Chloe,” Nick says, and I really wish he would stop saying my name, because every time he does I imagine him saying it in other contexts and in other places, like against my lips or in my ear. “Didn’t we already have a conversation about the song ‘Steal Away’?”

“Perhaps,” I whisper.

“And what song is playing on repeat right now?”

I take a breath. The words come out shaky. “‘Steal Away’ by Robbie Dupree.”

He still smells like a sexy grandpa, and I hate that this is turning me on.

The lights go off again, and this time, they don’t come back on after two seconds. We stand there in silence and darkness, except for a lightning flash that illuminates Nick’s face. He is too close to me, and his hand is entirely too on my arm. I can barely see him, but I can feel him, the warmth and Nick-ness of him right in front of me, the heat from his chest radiating toward me like he’s a portable space heater. I want to hold out my hands in front of his chest to warm them.

I should take a step back, away from his hand. I should go find my coat, walk home, let the rain function as a cold shower, and then go to bed, where he can haunt my erotic dreams and nightmares. That would be the logical thing to do.

But I’m not always a logical person.

“The last time I played Robbie Dupree . . .” I say in a low voice. He leans in closer to hear me. “You said you wouldn’t be responsible for what you’d do.”

My eyes adjust to him in the glowing red light of the EXIT sign. I may be imagining it, but I think I see the outline of his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “I did say that.”

Reason #9: You know that grumpy demeanor is just hiding secret wells of passion.